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Christian Louboutin’s red-heeled pumps are an unmistakable fashion statement. The flash of color — a bold scarlet — instantly declares that a woman isn’t just wearing heels, she’s wearing Louboutins. But where did the look come from? An art school dropout, Louboutin got his start designing shoes for the showgirls at Folies Bergère, a famous cabaret in Paris. International travel helped refine his approach to design, and in the late 1970s, Louboutin spent time abroad immersing himself in the cultures of Egypt and India. Christian Louboutin’s red-heeled pumps are an unmistakable fashion statement. The flash of color — a bold scarlet — instantly declares that a woman isn’t just wearing heels, she’s wearing Louboutins.Read More →

At the age of thirteen, most of us spent our free time obsessing over our favorite celebrities, our latest crushes, or how much we couldn’t wait to grow up and move out of the house. Christian Louboutin, one of the greatest shoe designers in the world, was about ten steps ahead. At the tender age of 12, Louboutin had already been expelled from school three times and moved out of his parents’ house. His mom was extremely indulgent and liked to please her children, which granted Louboutin tons of freedom at a very young age. So how, you may ask, did this rebellious youngster become one ofRead More →

French designer Christian Louboutin — he of the red-soled shoes — is planning to appeal a recent New York Court decision that allows rival company Yves Saint Laurent to continue its own scarlet-soled pumps. Louboutin had his signature trademarked in 2006, but the decision could ultimately change that, permitting legions of copycats to capitalize on the red sole’s sexy appeal. The case has caused a bit of confusion in the fashion community. (Can’t YSL find another color — say, yellow — without taking Louboutin’s signature?, they ask.) For Louboutin, who has painted the soles of his shoes red since 1992, red implies sensuality — and servesRead More →

Cardi B is not the only artist to reference Christian Louboutin shoes, and their trademark red soles, in her lyrics. Her nod to the expensive designer item as “bloody shoes” is iconic though and word of “Bodak Yellow” and its huge success has reached the French designer himself. Speaking to the New York Times at Paris Fashion Week, Louboutin was asked if he was aware of Cardi B’s No.1 single. Though he admitted he was “not a big rap person,” the designer acknowledged the Bronx rapper. “She has the hair like that?” he is quoted as saying while waving his hands around chin level.Read More →

PARIS — The name Christian Louboutin, the flash of a shoe’s red sole — these things have become shorthand for luxury, fabulosity and sex appeal, a kind of synecdoche of success. “There is a type of joke that’s often said in Paris,” Mr. Louboutin said, sitting behind his desk at his offices in the First Arrondissement, not far from Les Halles, “that my name almost became like Frigidaire.” That is to say, a brand name turned byword. Mr. Louboutin and his trademark red soles (he has defended them against imitators in court) have been a tenacious presence in pop culture for years, turning up oftenRead More →